From mutated insects and broken-down rescue robots, to cobweb-infested schools that haven’t been touched in years, the Fukushima evacuation zone - the site of one of the worst disasters of the 21st century - is showing no signs of regaining even a semblance of habitability... for humans, at least.
基因突變的昆蟲、損毀的救援機器人、學校里層層密布的蜘蛛網……多年都無人問津，沒有任何跡象表明經歷了21世紀最嚴重災難的福島無人區還可以居住，至少，對人類來說不可以。

Wild boars are reportedly thriving in the evacuated areas around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which experienced multiple meltdowns following an earthquake-triggered tsunami back in 2011. And now they’re tearing through nearby farmlands, causing more than US$900,000 (￥98 million) in crop damage for local farmers.
2011年，一場地震引發的海嘯導致福島第一核電站發生多次核反應堆堆芯熔毀事故，而現在那片核災區野豬泛濫。它們毀壞附近的農田，給當地農民造成了90多萬美元（約合9800萬日元）的損失。

How did things get so bad? Well, under normal circumstances, this boar population would be kept under control by local hunters, with The Japan Times calling pork - including wild boar meat - "the nation’s most popular meat".
事情怎么會變成這樣呢？其實，在正常情況下，當地獵人可以控制野豬數量。《日本時報》稱，豬肉，包括野豬肉，是“日本最受歡迎的肉類”。

But the problem is these wild boars have been contaminated with caesium-137 - a radioactive substance with a half-life of 30 years - from eating plants and small animals around the exclusion zone, and now the hunters won’t go near them.
但問題是，由于這些野豬吃的是無人區的植物和小動物，它們已經被一種半衰期有30年的放射性物質銫137污染了。

"Wild boar, along with raccoon, have been taking advantage of the evacuation zone, entering vacant houses in areas damaged by the [disaster], and using them as breeding places or burrows," assistant ecology professor Okuda Keitokunin at the Fukushima University Environmental Radioactivity Institute told the local press.
福島大學環境放射研究院生態學助理教授Okuda Keitokunin對當地媒體說：“野豬、浣熊趁著疏散區沒有人，搬進了空房子里，在那里繁殖居住。”

Now reproducing with abandon in the exclusion zones, the wild boar population has increased 300 percent since the disaster, from around 3,000 to 13,000, and they’re spilling out into the nearby farms to tear up and trample the crops.
如今，野豬在無人區里自由繁殖，數量已經增長了300%，從3000頭變成了13000頭，它們還沖進附近的農場，糟蹋莊稼。

And local authorities are running out of ideas for how to contain the rampaging force of radioactive boars, as Travis Andrews at The Washington Post reports:
而且當地政府對怎樣制止這群狂暴的放射性野豬也束手無策。《華盛頓郵報》記者特拉維斯?安德魯斯報道稱：

"These animals are unfit for human consumption, which presents another problem: hunters can attempt to reduce the population, but they have to do something with the carcasses. According to Texas A&M wildlife and fisheries professor Billy Higginbotham, the average size of a male hog is around 200 pounds (90 kg).
“這些動物不宜為人類消費，這又有另外一個問題：獵人可以減少野豬數量，但他們還得處理野豬尸體。德克薩斯農工大學野生生物和漁業科學教授比利?希金博特姆教授說，雄性野豬的平均重量約有200磅（約90公斤）。

Considering this average, if 13,000 are killed, hunters have around 2,600,000 pounds (1,179,340 kg) of potentially dangerous flesh requiring disposal."
按這個平均數字計算，如果獵人捕殺了一萬三千頭野豬，他們就要處理260萬磅（約117.9萬公斤）有潛在危險的豬肉。”

The hunters have been dumping the radioactive boar carcasses in three designated mass graves in the nearby city of Nihonmatsu, but they’re only big enough to hold about 600 of these sizeable creatures, and they’re filling up fast.
在附近的二本松市，獵人們已經在三個指定的填尸場填埋有放射性的野豬尸體了，但這些地方大概只能容納600具這么大的動物，而且很快就會填滿。

"Sooner or later, we’re going to have to ask local people to give us their land to use," Tsuneo Saito, a local boar hunter, told The Sunday Times. "The city doesn’t own land which isn’t occupied by houses."
當地一名野豬獵戶Tsuneo Saito對《星期日泰晤士報》說：“我們遲早都會請求本地居民把土地給我們用，城市的土地都蓋滿了房子。”

The most logical solution once these mass graves are filled to the brim is incinerating the rest of the radioactive carcasses, but you can’t just burn contaminated flesh - you need a special facility that’s capable of filtering out the radioactive materials so they’re not redistributed across the land via smoke particles.
最合理的解決辦法就是，一旦這些填尸場堆滿，就焚燒剩下的放射性尸體，但不能僅僅燒掉這些被污染了的肉，還需要可以過濾掉放射性物質的特殊設備，防止它們隨煙飄到其它地方去。

Andrews reports that a facility like this exists in the nearby city of Soma, but "it can only handle three boars a day (or 21 a week, which is only 1,092 each year; not quite 13,000)," he says.
據安德魯斯報道，像這樣的設施只有附近的相馬市才有，但“它一天只能處理三頭野豬（一周21頭，一年才只有1092頭，與13000頭還差得很遠）”。

So far, this is as close to a solution as the local farmers, hunters, and authorities have been able to get.
目前，這已經是當地農民、獵人、政府當局所能想到的最好辦法了。

While nuclear meltdowns are tragic events for us humans, leading to a loss of life, homes, and livelihoods for so many people, many species of wildlife have shown incredible resilience in places humans fear to tread.
盡管核事故是人類的不幸，很多人因此失去生計、生命、背井離鄉，但很多種野生動物的數量卻在這片人類害怕涉足的土地上猛烈反彈。

As we reported back in October, populations of elks, deer, wolves, bears, lynx, and boars are thriving in the Chernobyl exclusion zone decades after the devastating meltdown, simply due to a lack of human interference. Sarah Kaplan reported for The Washington Post that some of these populations have more than doubled in recent years.
10月份我們報道了一篇文章，幾十年前切爾諾貝利核電站發生了毀滅性的事故，而現在，由于沒有人類干擾，鹿、狼、熊、山貓和野豬都在那里迅速繁殖。《華盛頓郵報》的記者莎拉?卡普蘭說，有些品種的數量近幾年翻了一番不止。

"That wildlife started increasing when humans abandoned the area in 1986 is not earth-shattering news," radio-ecology expert Tom Hinton from Fukushima University told her. "What’s surprising here was the life was able to increase even in an area that is among the most radioactively contaminated in the world."
“1986年人們撤離切爾諾貝利后野生動物的數量就一直在增長，這并不是什么駭人聽聞的消息，”福島大學放射生態學專家湯姆?辛頓對她說，“令人震驚的是即使在世界上放射性污染最嚴重的地區，生命還能如此快速繁殖。”

Meanwhile, radioactive boars aren't the only thing local authorities in Fukushima are having to deal with. There's a whole lot of contaminated water still leaking out of the power plant, and no one's quite sure how to get rid of the radioactive tritium they're extracting from it.
同時，放射性的野豬并不是福島政府當局唯一要處理的事。還有大量被污染的水從核電站泄露出去，沒有人確切知道該怎樣處理從里面提取出來的放射性物質氚。

One thing's for sure - humanity has never seen a disaster quite like this, and we've still got many years to go before this nightmare is over for the people trying to live in the area. All we can do is hope that science can come through with some answers.
但有一點是肯定的——人類從來沒有經歷過這樣的災難，我們還要花很多年來解決在這片土地上居住的問題，結束這場噩夢。我們能做的只有祈禱科學可以快快找到答案。

Vocabulary

mutate: 突變
boar: 野豬；（未閹的）公豬
half-life: [核] 半衰期
burrow: 地洞，穴；藏身處；住處
carcass: （人或動物的）尸體；殘骸
lynx: 山貓

英文來源：sciencealert
譯者：實習生孫美真
審校&編輯：丹妮